The Role of the Family in Health Care

All of my natural grandparents, with the exception of one grandmother, all died by the time I turned 5.  Although I knew my surviving grandma loved me in her own way, she lived a fair distance away and it was just not her nature to be very warm or affectionate.  We enjoyed pleasant visits a couple of times a year and I cherish my memories of her.  She has been gone for nearly 20 years now.



 

When I was 16 years old, I started dating my husband.  His grandmother, Anna Marie Stalder Kauffman Figg, became mine.  I am sure that I never called her by her given name, I have always called her Grandma.  When I first met her, she was 61.  She is now in her 90th year.  The long months that Mike was away in the Marines, I spent many afternoons with Grandma and Grandpa Figg at their antique shop in Buffalo.  I learned how to refinish furniture, appreciate history and Grandpa loved to talk politics, a passion of mine even way back then.  There was an ice cream shop next door and on hot days, Grandpa would go buy us all sundaes.  Certainly, it was not the way most teenagers spent a lot of time, but I had never had the love and attention from grandparents before and I enjoyed finally being able to have the experience.  Grandpa died in June of 1999 and he is still missed.

Grandma has aged very gracefully and is a treasure to all who know her.  She is front and center at family gatherings, attends many games and recitals for great-grandchildren, rarely misses church, and has an active social life with extended family and friends.  She lives her life on her terms and has enjoyed relatively good health.  She made the decision for herself several years ago to start decreasing her driving and except for maybe a rare, short trip to church or the grocery store, I don't think she drives at all anymore. It happened so gradually and sensibly that it isn't something that ever really became a topic of conversation.  She does still have her car and prefers to have someone else drive it when she needs to run errands.  With other things, she is more stubborn.  She still lives in her home, with a large yard and all the maintenance, and 14 steps to go up from the lower level family room entry to the upper main living area where her bedroom and kitchen are.  She fell and broke her hip a few years ago and it was strongly recommended that she reconsider her living arrangements, but no one sees her making a move and it is not something she cares much to discuss. 

She has not been herself for a while, we have all noticed it but she kept insisting she was fine.  Last week, she finally went to the hospital and was admitted for a few days.  Grandma receives the very best health care and it has nothing to do with the Genesis Health System, Medicare, her AARP supplement or the dawn of Obamacare.  Grandma receives the best because she has family and friends in her life who notice when she isn't herself, who make sure she gets checked on and who make sure she feels needed and wanted.  It doesn't fall on one person and it isn't left to overworked health care workers.  Her loved ones each do what we are able by offering a ride, taking her out to eat, taking her to church, stopping by for a visit with a vase of flowers or garden goodies, inviting her to a ball game, checking on maintenance needs of her house, making the trip out to the mailbox and seeing to dozens of other small, ordinary needs.  She is blessed.

As the family is being systematically destroyed by liberal, secular forces so is every other part of society.  Need a house?  Just sign up for a government program.  Can't find the job you think you deserve?  Get an extension on your unemployment or find out how to qualify for disability.  Unmarried and having sex?  Go to Planned Parenthood for birth control or an abortion or rely on WIC, EBT, FIP, Section 8, Head Start and all the rest to provide for your child what a family should be providing.  Once in public school, nearly half the children are being trained that the breakfast or lunch they eat is being provided by someone other than Mom and Dad.  The hand that feeds you is the hand you turn to in times of trouble.  That hand used to be a family, it is increasingly becoming the government. 

As the family becomes more and more irrelevant in meeting a person's most basic needs, the next generation of senior citizens will have an experience very different from Grandma's.  Family-based senior care is going to be replaced with Obamacare.  A healthcare system that will be administered by impersonal government panels on a cost/benefit basis.  Seniors have higher health care costs and they are no longer producing at a level to justify the expense so fewer resources will be allocated to their care.  I fear that my parents, who are now in their late 60s and both healthy and my father-in-law, who suffers from chronic lung disease, will not get the medical care that they will need as they age and as Obamacare is fully implemented.  The voices and the advocacy of our family will be ignored because the voters of this country are being trained, both by monetary inducement and by the encouragement of moral decline, all wrapped up in compassionate, but meaningless, rhetoric, to rely on government to do what's best.  Further, the current generation of children are being raised (not in my house, but in too many others) in a reward-for-no-accomplishment, don't-make-me-uncomfortable, I'm-not-responsible, the-government-is-my-daddy environment.  It will not occur to them when the time comes that their parents need to be cared for to step up and fill that role.  They will believe that all they need to do is vote for the government largesse and they have done their part.  Past generations have accepted the norm that "Mom and Dad took care of me when I was unable to care for myself, so I will care for them when it is their turn."  Not so anymore.  Too many Moms and Dads aren't even providing for themselves, much less their children, so why would these children feel any obligation to help Mom or Dad?  If government has fed you and sheltered you all your life why would it not when you are old?



We must rebuild the family-centered foundation of our nation.  The damage that is being done by liberal, statist forces will destroy our country.  It will leave us financially and morally bankrupt and will place too much power in too few hands.  Someone, whom I love dearly but disagree with politically, said to me not long ago that "the population of our country has grown, so we need more government".  I will argue until my dying breath that we need less government, more family.  I know that my little blog is followed by about 6 people who largely think the way I do, so I'm not changing the world here.  I do look for opportunities to plant seeds.  Teenagers are always welcome in my home for real family dinners, around the table.  I ask friends how their parents or grandparents are getting along, both out of my own genuine interest and to plant the seed that they should be interested, too.  Look for your own opportunities to build family.  Attend reunions, send out those special occasion cards, go on a weekend camping trip, take a group of kids to a movie or fishing, make time for a family vacation and check on that elderly relative.  My healthcare in my golden years will depend on what values I instill in my children and grandchildren and if we can convince this next generation to vote for more family, not more government.